Digital board games have their own thriving little niche on mobile, from Catan to Through The Ages. Griblers takes the hex grid and board management of the genre and combines it with single player RPG and city building elements, in a new RPG released on iOS and Android.
Placing you in control of a mushroom troll civilization staking their claim in the Everwoods, Griblers challenges you to build your town while handling random events, leveling up your warriors, and expanding your control of the board. As you explore the surrounding landscapes, new materials and resources allow your town to flourish and craft equipment to increase your group's power and stats. Potions and better weapons can…

Three years after our hands-on with this animal kingdom board game, Armello is finally releasing on the App Store this month, slated for March 15th.
Choosing from a selection of woodland warriors, you‘ll explore and fight across Armello’s kingdom turn-by-turn, drawing event cards, rolling dice, and engaging in battles with other clans and combatants. With each decision - performing quests for kings, hiring agents to aid in your conquests, plot betrayals and backstabbings - you gain prestige and influence over the King’s rulings. While traversing the board is largely a game of resource management and making use of tile buffs such as stealth bonuses from forests, combat re…

After first releasing on iOS last year, the board game aesthetic and turn-based battles of Warbands: Bushido have now come to Android. If you’re looking for challenging strategy and a unique presentation, this is one strategy game to certainly check out.
16th century Japan is an era rife in conflict, and it’s within this war of samurai, ninja, mercenaries, and other factions that Warbands sets its gameplay. Each themed scenario utilized a blend of dice rolls, positioning on hex-based maps, and deck buildings to craft a wide array of tactics, letting you place detailed figurines to initiate battle among forest clearings, villages, and other locations. Swords clang, d…

Based on the popular artwork and world of Jakub Rozalski, Scythe is a digital board game adaptation, revolving around the clash of towering iron machines and nations in an alternate 1920s, and it’s coming to iPad some time in 2018.
Set in a Europe where damaged nations and fallen leaders adapt to this incredible new technology, you wage asymmetrical war against other countries, conquering terrorities, gathering recruits and supplies, and activating powering mechs to turn the tide of battles. Each faction brings their own unique abilities, starting stats, and objectives to the board, while narrative choices let you mold your nation and leader through how you treat your c…

If you prefer your board games digital, and like both strategy and collectible card games, then Epic Arena is probably one for you to check out.
It's free-to-play, nicely presented, and provides plenty of challenges to tackle. Both human and computer opponents are on offer, with lots of special missions to flex your creativite muscles when it comes to quickly winning battles.
I had a quick go with Epic Arena, here's what happened.…

Square Enix Montreal’s fantastic Hitman GO has just received an additional chapter in its latest update.
The Airport chapter adds a whole new set of missions to the this turn-based take on the Hitman franchise. As with previous chapters, the Airport is broken up into a number of diorama-like stages that have you moving past various security measures en route to your unfortunate mark.
This setting brings with it a host of challenges to overcome. These include moving walkways that rapidly move you through extended locations, and high alert guards that can monitor two paths at once.
IN addition to these new obstacles, Agent 47 now has an additional trick in his arsenal: patience…

Rodeo Games’s interpretation of Games Workshop’s table-top board game Warhammer Quest has juat had its price dropped on the App Store.
This strategic turn-based strategy game is a fantastic interpretation of the old board game. Drawing on a cast that spans from archers to wizards, you must build a squad of suitably stereotypical fantasy fighters to take on quests.
With dozens of dungeons and other subterranean areas to journey through you will have to master all of the game’s tactics, magic, and big swords if you hope to emerge victorious against the forces of chaos.
Careful construction of your team is vital. Archers prove invaluable at range, but placing one in front…

Hitman GO is not the game fans of the series might expect. Rather than take the form of a standard third-person action game, Hitman GO plays out like a strategic board game.
You begin by selecting a contract. Each of these mission play out on their own uniquely styled board. The settings range from a country club setting to more industrial locations, each with their own tile sets and enemy types.
The goal is to guide Agent 47’s through the grid-based play area to his…

Hitman GO, a turn-based translation of the Hitman series, is making its move on the App Store at midnight tonight.
We have been keeping an excited eye on Hitman GO since it was announced back in February. Square Enix Montreal’s new take on the franchise sends Agent 47 on a number of hits, each one styled as its own board game.
Each board sets the scene with diorama environments for the infamous assassin to advance through. Though this change in scene has shifted the gameplay to a turn-based format, you will have to plan the barcoded assassin’s route to his target, and decide whether to sneak in and shank your unsuspecting victim, or charge in for a full-frontal assault.…

Based on Games Workshops's Talisman board game, Talisman Prologue HD came to the App Store nearly a year ago. Now, it has finally received its long promised multiplayer update, allowing you to quest with friends locally or online.
Developed by Nomad Games, Talisman Prologue HD was well received when it released last year, despite only featuring a single player campaign.
However, the boardgame was originally designed to be played by numerous players at once. With 10 different characters choose from, each with their own strengths and alignments, playing with friends ensures almost endless ways for the game's 50 scenarios to unfold.
Board game fans who haven’t grabbed a copy of Talis…

UFHO2, a geometric turn-based multiplayer strategy game, was originally launched on PC after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Now, after more than two years, developer Tiny Colossus has finally bought the game to iPad.
Competing against your friends, you must guide your alien avatar around a maze collecting as many gems as possible along the way. You can complete a set number of moves each turn, and a time limit in which to make your decisions.
The mazes are made up of seven interlocking hexagonal areas, each with seven further hexagonal rooms inside them. With both areas and rooms able be rotated during your turn, you will find yourself opening and closing off multiple paths a…

To understand Fluxx by Playdek and Looney Labs you have to understand 'madness' itself. If you reach back to the days of your youth, there are undoubtedly examples of play time with friends where 'playing' was all that mattered - rules existed in a basic sense, but they were ever-changing and evolving, almost at random. Fluxx embodies this free-spirited insanity to create a card game that is never the same game each time you play it; in fact it's entirely different from round to round,…

Reiner Knizia is no small fish in the world of board games. Titles such as the Lord of the Rings and Ingenious are enjoyed world wide, while Lost Cities, a 2-player 60-card game has even proven to be popular enough to warrant an XBLA remake. Having previously converted Carcassonne to the iOS platform, The Coding Monkeys have taken it upon themselves to restore Lost Cities to its original design, bolstering it with individually scaling AI opponents and multiple asynchronous online games…

We've seen a lot of games involving zombies in our tenure as reviewers, and most of them are pretty much the same. After all, the zombie is a great opponent in an action game. They're slow, there's a lot of them, and most importantly, they're not human. It's been a while since there's been a unique take on zombies in the app store, but Zombie Quest – Mastermind the Hexes most definitely fits that description. More a monster game than a zombie game, but what we have here is a stra…

I've made it abundantly clear in the past that I love board games. While video games are obviously a passion of mine, their roots are embedded deeply in the social past-time of gathering around a table and vying for supremacy via cards, dice, tokens or just your mind
Scotland Yard is almost 30 years old now and a true classic, but also one that may have left many a child frustrated by its obvious weaknesses as a board game, so how does it shape up as a video game?
The game supports b…